The 4th graders went to Hansen’s Dairy Farm for a field trip. We were studying the Midwest Region in social studios. It was a long bus ride, but it was worth it when we got there.

Hansen’s Dairy has 350 cows. Calves can empty a milk bottle in less than five minutes. the boys are sold for meat, and the girls are kept for milk when they get older. They are kept in groups according to age or status.

2 months: “school” when they learn things and make friends

4 months: “teenager with acne”

6 months: get ready to go with adult cows

2 years: 1st baby; become milking cows

Hansen’s Dairy let us make butter. They put the ingredients in a tiny jar. We had partners, and we shook up the jar. Their ice cream is so good and the butter is good too. The cheese curds look good.

The cows eat 90 pounds of corn silage each day. The cows drink 40 pounds of water and give 80 pounds of milk a day.

The milking is automatic. There are 16 cows at a time. It take 5 minutes for each cow. They milk cows at 3:30 a.m.and at 3:30 p.m.

Everything is done on the farm Grampa and 4 brothers each in charge of a department: 1- crops, 2 – cows, 3 – production in the diary, 4 – delivery of the products

They have three kangaroos. The boy doesn’t like people. They tame the girls because you don’t want a six foot kangaroo hugging you.

They put magnets into the cows’ first stomachs because they eat corn silage and sometimes metal from the machinery gets into the corn silage. Cows burp up food 400 times a day. The milk is not homogenized (so the cream rises to the top and must be shaken to mix with the milk). Cows have four stomachs.

Eartags hang in the office at Hansen’s Dairy. There are no duplicates of the names. They have a baby cow book, and the cow’s poop becomes fertilizer.